Jimbatron

The cars are too fast, much faster as in IV, this is why you can reach the end of the map pretty fast.

Correct. It's actually necessary for them to be this fast to make the map vaguely useable. If they were slower, it would take forever to get from one side to the other. This is the reason I think a lot of people say the handling is dumbed down. They had to make it workable for insterstate driving speeds, but the side effect is that any kind of driving at inner city speeds is a doddle.